Electrically powered artificial lighting has become ubiquitous in modern society. Electrical lighting devices are commonly deployed, for example, in homes, buildings of commercial and other enterprise establishments, as well as in various outdoor settings. Typical luminaires generally have been a single purpose lighting device that includes a light source to provide artificial general illumination of a particular area or space.
Multiple lighting devices are often utilized to provide general illumination to an entire region, such as an entire floor of an office or commercial establishment. Traditionally, such lighting devices are distributed in a pattern across the ceiling of the region under illumination. These lighting devices may include broad, generally planar structures, such as optical diffusers, which reflect a large portion of any sound generated in the region under illumination. In installations with substantial space between the lighting devices, the intervening spaces often tend to deaden sound a reduce impact of sound reflection off of the planar structures of the lighting devices.
It is desirable to provide sound reducing capabilities in the illuminated area or space. Currently, there exists acoustic panels that are configured to reduce noise or control sound in many different spaces. However, lighting equipment for illumination and noise equipment for sound control have fundamentally different requirements, for example, for consumer applications. There have been proposals to embed acoustic panels with LEDs to light up the space. However, such proposals require making the light panels with acoustic material and placing the panels in specific directions with respect to one another in order to allow for acoustic absorption.
Thus there is a need for technical improvements in acoustic-illumination integrated device to control the sound.